


Midnight devil, put your hands on me

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield Have a Good Relationship, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Dreams and Nightmares, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Insomnia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Siblings, Sharing a Bed, Sleep Deprivation, Sleepovers, Step-siblings, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 21:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20534690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Billy dreams of being consumed and swallowed by a big black shadow with its claws in his soul and its fangs in his bloodstream and Max is there to pick up the pieces when he needs her the most.Family looks after each other, right? Even horrible older brothers who tried to destroy the world and annoying little sisters who watched her brother suffer. Maybe it's not the best family, but it's their family, and what else is family for?





	Midnight devil, put your hands on me

**Author's Note:**

> oh my GOD I need to stop writing Stranger Things, I haven't even watched the show yet and I'm absolutely obsessed with writing about it????? I need to write The Umbrella Academy or something to get my mojo back. Ughhhhh anyway, I hope you enjoy it!! Just a short little fic that I really needed to write, mostly for me, but you know.

Some nights, Billy dreamt. Well- most nights Billy dreamt, and occasionally, they were peaceful and empty and devoid of any thought, but he wasn’t that lucky. Often, more often than Billy would ever admit, he dreamt of _him_.

_Him_, the great black shadow and the all-encompassing, all-consuming voice Billy heard in his head. _Him_, and the way _he_ sunk _his_ claws into every part of Billy _he_ could reach and the metaphorical gunk that Billy felt swirl around his insides like insidious smoke. _Him_, and the artificial anger that was implanted into Billy’s brain and that darkness that was sent to consume him.

Even during the day, Billy sometimes lost himself in the thrall of memory, of thought, until his every waking moment was occupied by the shadow looming over him, even though _he_ was long gone by now.

So following everything that had happened, both before and after his body and soul had been taken hostage by the darkness, Billy was obviously no stranger to nightmares.

But because of his experience with them, he had a vast amount of practice in terms of keeping himself silent that he had never had much of an issue with people storming in and checking on him, but the grasp of this one was so sudden and so startling that- well.

Max had heard him. She was the only one who even could have, because Neil and Susan had left for a few days on a romantic couples retreat to that crappy motel at the edge of town- apparently it was a little difficult to get your groove on when your teenage children were in the next room- and left Billy in charge of Max. They were the only two in the house. Maybe that was why he had let his guard down like that.

This wasn’t the first time Billy had cried out accidentally after a nightmare, but this was the first time anyone had ever come to him. Neil just didn’t give any fucks about Billy so he never bothered to get off his ass to check if his son was getting murdered or crying into his covers and his mother… well.

But Max was shaking him, frantically, her fingers digging painfully into the meat of his arm and her nails leaving half-moon crescents into his skin. “Max,” he mumbled, mouth half-covered by his bedsheets, and he slapped her hand away. “Enough.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Max let go of Billy and sat back on her haunches, her eyes so wide and frightful and wild that Billy actually felt her panic deep in his soul. “You were screaming,” she said softly. “I was scared. I thought…”

Stiffly, Billy sat up and leant on one arm, his throat raw from screaming, and he ran a hand down his face. “’m fine. Go back to bed.”

Shaking her head, Max reached forward again and fluttered her hands over Billy’s body, wanting to touch him but afraid of the results, but she took Billy’s lack of reaction as permission, and she lightly brushed her hands over his skin. “You had a nightmare,” she said obviously, her voice still shaking, but a little stronger than before. “Didn’t you? Was it about _him_?”

Billy winced as Max graced her hand over a tender, still healing bruise. “I don’t remember,” he lied, and Max looked at him sternly. “I mean it.”

“I’m not exactly the best person to be lying to,” Max said as she ran her fingers down the inside of Billy’s arm. “God- you’re bleeding.”

And he was. When he glanced down, he realized that the slick feeling he had felt subconsciously in his sleep was not just a thick layer of nightmare-induced sweat like what covered the rest of his body but smeared blood from where he had cut himself open with something while he thrashed around. “It’s fine,” he said in an attempt to get Max to stop searching for something to clean him up with. “We both know that I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not the point,” Max said as she glanced around the room in search of something that might help and came up with a half-empty water bottle and a dirty cloth. “The point is that you’re bleeding and you know what will happen if you get blood on the sheets.”

Billy let her pour water onto the rag and gently wipe it down the length of his arm, watching the blood slowly fade away, because he did know what would happen if he got blood on the sheets, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with it.

“So?” Max said suddenly. “Are you going to tell me what you dreamt about or are we going to keep sitting here pretending that nothing happened?”

Sighing, Billy reached a hand up and brushed his hair out of his face. “Get lost, Max.”

“'Get lost Max’,” she mocked and Billy looked at her in surprise. They had come a long way from her being afraid of him. “Well? Are you going to spill it or not?”

“Honestly Max, I don’t really want to talk about it,” Billy said sharply, pulling his arm away from her grasp, now clean of all blood. “So if you would kindly fuck off, that would be great. If you’re so intent on being awake this early in the morning, then why don't you go and meet up with that boyfriend of yours, huh?”

But Max was unfazed. She leant in closer. “You and I both know that you’ll be much better off if you talk about it.”

Unfortunately, Billy knew she was right. Defeated, he leant back against the headboard and closed his eyes, because he didn’t want to look at Max or the ceiling. “I really don’t remember,” he said. “It was more of a… feeling. I know _he_ was there. Watching me. Wanting me. I couldn’t get away. I think you were there, but not for long. I think _he_ killed you. Or got rid of you, somehow. I don’t know. Your weird friend was there, the one with the powers who threw me into the wall and all that. Harrington, too, but he was gone real quick. I’m pretty sure I killed him myself. But… it was like I was drowning in shadow. I don’t think I want to describe it again.”

“That’s fine,” Max said as she moved from where she was to sit next to Billy against the headboard, and after a moment, Billy raised his arm so she could nestle in next to him. “You don’t have to. I just thought it would help.”

Sighing, he let her do it, mostly because he couldn’t bring himself to push him away. He didn’t have the energy. “I’m so tired, Max,” he admitted, a surprise even to himself, and he felt Max tense in shock beside him. His voice was so quiet he could hardly hear himself, but Max heard him because she was Max.

“I know,” Before he knew it, Billy felt tentative fingers in his hair, and he subconsciously leant into the touch. He hadn’t been touch with kindness in so, so long. “I know. You don’t sleep. Even when you get the chance, you don’t. You could sleep in the Comaro when Neil’s home and on the couch when he’s not. But… you don’t. I watch you, sometimes, and you stay awake staring at the ceiling for hours instead of going to sleep. Sometimes, it makes me worry about you going for drives. I’m always worried about you falling asleep behind the wheel.”

“Yeah,” Billy said. He would never admit that he sometimes felt the same way. “But what can you do? Every time I close my eyes I see _him_, and every time I sleep it’s like he gets me all over again. I’ve lived through that enough as it is, thanks very much.”

“I’ve seen you sleep when you pick me up from school,” Max points out. “Sometimes you drop me off in the mornings and when I look through the windows during the day, I still see the Camaro. You’re usually still asleep when I get to the car.”

Billy didn’t know what to say to that. “Well, I guess it’s easier to sleep when I’m not worrying about constant pain and death every single second. You and I both know that I’m the scariest thing in that whole fucking school, anyway. I’ve got nothing to worry about in a carpark. Guess I just feel safer surrounded by people who aren’t trying to kill me.”

For a few long moments, Max was silent and still, so much so that Billy actually started to dose against her, her fingers still in his hair, but he was woken by Max shifting and moving carefully out from under him. He was a little sad to see her go, not that he’d admit it though, but he was just so tired that he couldn’t manage to wake up the rest of the way, so he let her go, albeit reluctantly, and tried to fall asleep again.

But then Max was back, her sleeping bag under one arm and a torch in the other, and Billy watched her through bleary eyes as she set up her sleeping bag on the floor beside his bed and set up a little station, with the torch turned on and pointed in her direction so she was lit up in the darkness and one of her mother’s sleeping masks from their bedroom fitted over her face. “So you can see me,” she answered Billy’s confused look.

“Max, what the hell are you doing?” he tried to say, but he was just so tired that it came out muffled and unintelligible. Max understood him anyway because she was Max.

“You said that you sleep better when you’re surrounded by people who aren’t going to kill you,” she said like it was obvious. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m not in the mood to kill you, not tonight at least, although we both know that I totally could if I wanted to.” She laughed. It was a nice sound. It broke through the fog in Billy’s brain for a moment and drove away the encroaching darkness. “But yeah, I’m sleeping here tonight. I want you to actually get some sleep, because you look like shit, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

And she yanked the face mask down over her eyes with a definitive nod and a finality to the conversation, and soon she was snoring, and with every gentle snore that left her slightly parted lips, Billy felt the darkness retreat from the edges of his mind a little more, and eventually he fell asleep and dreamt of absolutely nothing.

In the morning, he was woken by light streaming in through his open blinds and a very small, very cold foot with very long toenails kicking him in the side.

Sometime in the night, Max had crawled up to join Billy in the bed, and Billy hadn’t protested. As he looked down at her now, though, face calm and lax, bright red hair tangled over her face like a silken spiders web, drool down the side of her chin to stain his bedsheets, he isn’t sure that he would have had the heart to do it anyway.

He wasn’t really sure that the previous night had even happened. Did he really let his insufferable little sister persuade him to talk about his nightmares and crawl into bed with him so she could play with his hair and fall asleep on the ground beside him? What the hell had he become? Never in a million years would he ever have predicted that he’d grow so soft, and for Max, of all bloody people. He hated her… didn’t he? No. He didn’t. he hadn’t hated her for a very, very long time since way before the Mind Flayer got to him.

Slowly, he crept out of the bed, careful not to wake her, and exited the bedroom. He padded barefoot across the wooden floors towards the kitchen in search of something edible, and when he came up empty, he quietly began pulling out pots and pans from their places.

Neil and Susan would be home in a few hours, maybe just before lunch, but until then, it was still just Billy and Max alone together in a house too big for silence and decided that he was going to do something with the few remaining hours they had left before everything went back to shit. For now, he would let her sleep, and grant her the same kindness she gave him the previous night.

Max did something nice for him last night. This morning, Billy was going to do something nice for her. He wasn’t a great cook, but he could make her breakfast, maybe, fatty bacon and greasy eggs or waffles with whipped cream and berries or pancakes with maple syrup. Something right and full of too much sugar and fat, just to piss off their parents.

You always look after family, and Max certainly played her part last night. Now, it was Billy’s turn. It was the least he could do.

And if Max was his family now, then maybe, his family wasn't all that bad. Even if it did only consist of two people. 


End file.
